


ceci n'est pas un troll

by cthchewy (pyrrhic_victoly)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-26
Updated: 2016-08-26
Packaged: 2018-08-11 03:32:37
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7874536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrrhic_victoly/pseuds/cthchewy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An asshole meets another asshole and they get on like a hive on fire, plus some obligatory helmsman angst.</p>
            </blockquote>





	ceci n'est pas un troll

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Newtavore](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Newtavore/gifts).



They burst into the helmsblock, and all of a sudden the world slows down to a minute crawl. Sollux can see everything happening in slow motion. Seconds tick by while he’s stuck watching, his comrades’ movements slowed down until their limbs punch through air as if it were thick honey.

Karkat’s eyes bug out, his mouth opens in a yell. He’s pointing and screaming directions, as always. Equius barges through with his technicians, who set about re-allocating the ship’s processes before slicing away the biowires. Slick fuchsia fluid leaks out everywhere. Feferi shakes her head, covers her face with her palms to hide the tears, and Sollux knows she’s crashing. The weight of everything is coming down on her.

She’s crashing, and so is he.

Sollux feels nothing. He’s just numb, his mind frozen in time and place. The helmsman is wearing his face.

 

* * *

 

It’s strange looking at that sack of flesh and thinking “that’s a troll”. It’s not a troll. Not a full one, anyway.

The helmsman is shaking, almost thrashing, in a pod in the medbay. Having been deemed too unstable for sopor, his pod is instead lined with snuggle planes to form a makeshift pile. Every once in a while, he lets out raspy snarls and shrieks. They’re beastly sounds, unlike anything a sane, sentient creature would make. It appears as if all his senses have deteriorated due to long disuse.

If he can’t see or hear or speak, is he still a troll? If the mind is gone, is he still a troll?

“I was wondering when you would visit, and here you are!” Aradia says. She hops up from the pod-side stool, shaking out the wrinkles in her skirt.

Shrug. “Here I am.”

“He’s not just a look-alike, you know. The genetics are a match. It seems the coldbloods were right about ancestors.”

Sollux snorts. “Please. Given the vast amount of eggs hatched and laid every night, it’s just a game of probability. _Eventually_ patterns of inheritance will emerge; that’s all there is to it. They were right about the _existence_ of ancestors, but they were wrong about everything else. I’m not doomed to repeat his life,” he says, gazing at the pitiful huddled figure. “I’d kill myself before it could happen.”

Aradia hums in acknowledgment. “Self-fulfilling prophecies are the most powerful prophecies of all...”

“Yeah," he agrees. "And what were you doing here?”

“Ah! Well,” Aradia says, with a bright smile and mysterious twinkle in her eye, “he’s a very very old troll, and he has a collection of very very interesting ghosts following him around. We were just having a nice chat, but we’ll leave you two alone now.”

She swishes past, light on her feet, and all is silent after the door closes in her wake. The helmsman is gnawing on a snuggle plane, his hands kneading rhythmically against the soft material. Sollux can almost pretend he’s just a sick troll when he’s quiet. He can almost forget that the medicullers had said the helmsman’s pan was most likely nothing but mush without the ship.

Maybe he would turn out to be one of those helmstrolls who had completely digitized their cognitive processes. Maybe they would find his consciousness as an AI hiding somewhere within the mess of the Battleship Condescension’s code - all those thousands of sweeps of code that Sollux’s tech team is now trawling through.

Sollux should just give up on this meatsack and let his team do their jobs, as it’s statistically the best chance of finding the remains of the Psiionic. But despite his disbelief in ancestors, he still has so many questions to ask, and so many things he wants to say. Perhaps it’s because his personal feelings are in the way that he doesn’t just admit defeat. The Psiionic might have been the best, but he was also the _first_. The bioware rig he’d been attached to was too outdated to support a full brain upload. If they find anything of him in the code, it’ll be broken pieces, too.

Hope and despair tear through Sollux’s thoughts in equal measure. He tells himself it’s useless even as he settles into the pod-side stool and reaches down to grasp one of the helmsman’s thin hands. He strokes his own claws gently over the protruding knuckles and presses firmer down along the palm the way he likes to massage his own hands after coding all day and night. The rhythmic action is comforting for the both of them. Apparently even mush-for-pan can appreciate the company of another troll.

“Shit,” Sollux mumbles under his breath. He’s so fucked up he’s making pale overtures to someone so far gone he’s practically a non-troll. “Sorry, sorry, damn. Fuck my mutant brain. That was so inappropriate I don’t even– Fuck, you can’t even understand me.”

As he moves to pull away, the helmsman’s hand tightens. Sollux reaches over with his other limb to disentangle the trapped appendage, only to be treated to a distressed sounding gurgle. The squeezing turns into a pattern of sorts, alternating in intensity. Light, heavy, heavy, light, light, heavy.

Slowly, ever so slowly, he speaks.

0110010001101111011011100010011101110100001000000110011101101111

don’t go

Sollux pulses beenary to the helmsman the way he does with his bees – with his psionics.

iit’2 ok, ii’m here

011101000110100001100001011011100110101100100000011110010110111101110101

thank you

 

* * *

 

“I’m telling you he _codes_! None of his other senses are working, but he’s _in there_.”

“Well, what do you want _me_ to do about it? Do I look like a docterrorist on top of being the Echo Of The Vast Expletive, Return Of He Who Fucking Got Culled Like A Larva For Our Sins, All Hail The Mutant Messiah Mark Two, The Sequel, The Revengening? I’m too busy being every numbnook’s god for this.”

“Take your bulge out of your own protein chute, KK. I’m only saying you could talk to him if you wanted, since I’m pretty sure even you could understand basic beenary.”

“Is that supposed to be a subtle jab at my coding skills? Because I will have you know I am still a well-respected programmer in my own right. You just don’t pay attention to us mere mortals since you’re part bee.”

“...Did you seriously just call yourself a well-respected programmer. You. How many husktops have you had blow up in your own face?”

“Pinchy has been going strong for two and a half sweeps!”

“And you named your husktop Pinchy. This is going to be one of those conversations that's so embarrassing we make a pact to forget about it immediately.”

“You’re right. I’m regretting this conversation even as we speak.”

“Pact?”

“Pact.”

 

* * *

 

Pale as diamonds, as stars, as light. The sweetness of pure pity without a drop of condescension, without the slightest tinge of hate…

That’s what Karkat thinks moirallegiance should be. Unfortunately, real trolls don’t fit so neatly into black and white boxes of “meant to be”. Their personalities aren’t tidy as code. They’re prone to illogical thinking and sudden changes of opinion, and most of them are assholes, Sollux included.

Even so, he finds himself visiting the medbay often and staying for long periods of time. The Psiionic has lived a life of isolation for so long that he’s afraid of being left alone. He’s been a battery for so long that he almost forgot how to be a troll.

If Sollux can’t make it, his friends try to stay by Psii’s side in order to help him get used to being around others. Karkat’s coding is as slow as Psii’s own, the amateur. Aradia doesn’t code, but she likes to visit the ghosts. Kanaya’s presence is always soothing, and for reasons known only to the Psiionic himself, he also calms easier around Nepeta.

When Sollux visits, he likes to pull the Psiionic’s head into his lap and drag his fingers through the coarse hair and down to the nape. If he presses further down, he can count the bumps of Psii’s vertebrae. Sollux has never been the healthiest of trolls, but feeling the damage done to Psii’s spindly body never fails to make his throat feel tight.

Psii heals, slowly but surely. His psionic abilities are the first to return, though they’re severely weakened and may never fully recover. Then he regains his voice, and then his sight, whereupon he promptly insults everyone while he can capitalize on not being able to hear their comebacks, or so he says.

“You’re messed up,” Sollux codes.

“And you’re the unholy spawn of my loins, so I guess you can blame me for our shared defects,” Psii codes back. “Tell me that’s not what you would do if you were in my position.”

It is, and Sollux grins.

In the background, Karkat yells, “Fuck, they’re enabling each other! Now we’ve gotta deal with two assholes squared!”

 

* * *

 

The Psiionic exits the Battleship Condescension on his own two feet. He walks slowly and unsteadily, but with purpose. Sollux offers his arm for support, and together they touch down on Alternian soil, the first adults to return in centuries.

Unlike when he was healing, it’s the Psiionic who pulls his descendent to his chest this time. The emotions are overwhelming. He’s had centuries to come to terms with the deaths of his loved ones, but the pain still lingers. He’s lost all hope and gained it again and gone back to where it all started.

“Are you sure you want to stay with me?” he mumbles into Sollux’s ear. “I’m not much of a troll. I mean, there’s not much of me left.”

“That’s fine, just don’t jab me with your elbows when we pile.”

“You’re the one who jabs me with your elbows! And your feet are cold, and you drool in your sleep.”

“Are you sure you’re not talking about yourself?”

He is, and he grins.


End file.
